isportsweb: Adreian Payne, Lacey Holsworth help paint my lasting image of this year's Michigan State team

8:56 AM, March 10, 2014

Adreian Payne of the Michigan State Spartans walks on the floor for Senior night with Lacey Holsworth, a 8-year-old from St. Johns Michigan who is battling cancer, after defeating the Iowa Hawkeyes 86-76. / Getty Images

By David Harns

Detroit Free Press Special Writer

David Harns is a senior writer and the MSU coverage coordinator for the Michigan-based sports website isportsweb.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Detroit Free Press nor its writers. Read his column every Monday and follow him on Twitter @isportsdave.

A little girl stands in the tunnel at the entrance to the basketball court Thursday, with a smile as bright as I've ever seen. She’s holding a bouquet of roses with her left hand and the hand of one of her closest friends with her right.

The two of them are looking up, along with the rest of the crowd, watching his career highlights on the big screen on Senior Night at the Breslin Center in East Lansing. They stand there for what seems like several minutes, smiling and nodding as the video board shows his greatest moments in green and white.

As the highlights end, he bends down, picks her up and puts her on his hip. He's about to carry her on to the court where she has cheered loudly and proudly for him and his team, as only an eight-year old can do.

It's perfect.

For a moment, I forget that her body is riddled with cancer.

And in that moment, I forget that he held his mom in his arms as she died when he was just 13 years old.

A horribly unfair situation

The little girl’s name is Lacey. She is beautiful. She’s eight years old. And she’s fighting for her life.

Her friend’s name is Adreian Payne. He was a little boy when his dad went to prison and when his mom died in his arms after a horrible asthmatic reaction.

As they walk toward center court, Adreian carries Lacey in his left arm; her right arm wrapped tightly behind his neck, as he high-fives his teammates along the way. When he reaches his head coach, he realizes that it’s time to put her down – but he doesn't want to let go of her hand quite yet. He poses as the cameras flash and the TV video rolls. In front of thousands of people who have come to honor him and celebrate his career, he keeps her directly in front of him. In his opinion, this is just as much about her as it is about him.

And he’s right. Nothing about grown men throwing a ball through a hoop can even come close to matching the importance of Lacey’s and Adreian’s stories of overcoming some of the worst things that life can throw your way.

Lacey has been battling an aggressive childhood cancer called neuroblastoma for almost two years. She appeared to be winning the fight and went to Disneyland to celebrate. But when she got back, the cancer was back.

Back to the hospital she went.

That’s where she had met the entire MSU basketball team a couple years back, as they were touring the children’s wing of the local hospital, offering hope to little Spartan kids.

It is stories such as these that tug at the heart. To picture Payne holding out a stuffed zebra to Lacey as she awoke from her chemo sessions. To picture the smile that comes across her face when she talks about her friend – Superman, as she calls him. To realize that every time he sends her a text or talks to her on the phone… he sees himself in her.

You see, Payne knows what it’s like to fight against a horribly unfair situation. After all, he’s been in as much emotional pain in his life as she has been in physical pain in hers.

Payne was just 13 years old when he couldn’t find his mom’s inhaler when she needed it the most. She had battled asthma all her life and this time it was too much – she collapsed on the bed. And Adreian held her tight as she died in his arms.

Payne is a fighter, though. Not only did he fight through his mother's death, he also fought through a learning disability to move himself from barely knowing how to read at age 16 to qualifying academically for a Big Ten university just a few years later. When he arrived at MSU, he found a mentor in Coach Izzo, who challenged him to become a man. He grew up. He matured.

And then he experienced, yet again, more pain. After his mother’s death, Payne had grown very close with his grandmother. But before his junior year of college began, he had to bury her – she had died of the same disease that had taken his mom.

Spartans with big hearts

The photographers are gone. The TV cameras are put away. Lacey is sitting on the large Spartan helmet painted at center court, smiling for her mom’s smartphone camera. It’s the same Spartans logo that Adreian had just bent down and kissed as he left the Breslin Center court for the final time as a Spartan.

The inspiring thing about these shirts is that they were not the product of MSU's marketing department. They were inspired by a manager at the local Buffalo Wild Wings who talked to a lady at Campus Village Apartments who knew a Spartan guy that makes t-shirts.

Abby Eiseler. Sara Blasius. Todd (TJ) Duckett. Spartans with hearts as big as Adreian’s and Lacey's. Spartans who organized one really big fundraiser for one really little girl. A fundraiser that you can participate in.

All day Monday, 10% of all sales at both mid-Michigan Buffalo Wild Wings locations (Lansing and East Lansing) will go to the Holsworth family. The event goes for 15 hours, from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.

While you’re there, pick up your own Lacey t-shirt – they are donated by Duckett's company (Simple-Ts) and will be on sale for $10 with every penny going to Lacey's family. If you are not in the area, but want to donate to the Holsworth family to help pay their medical expenses, you can mail your donation to:

Lacey Holsworth

P.O. Box 101

St. Johns, MI 48879

In just a few short days, televisions will be tuned in to see if Payne can lead this Spartans basketball team on an improbable postseason run, starting this weekend in Indianapolis at the Big Ten tournament.

Even if MSU runs the table by winning 3 games this weekend, 2 games the next weekend, 2 games the weekend after that and 2 more games in the Final Four... this image of Adreian and Lacey will still be my lasting image for this year's MSU team: A big man who overcame so much, holding tight to a little girl who's trying to do the same as thousands of complete strangers chant, "La-cey, La-cey, La-cey."